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European legislation for occupational safety and health (OSH) is based on the prevention of accidents and ill health. Apart from European directives, all Member States have national laws and strategies and expect enterprises to implement this preventative ethos, and thereby ensure adequate performance in OSH. Labour Inspectorates monitor and if necessary enforce these laws by deploying individual Labour Inspectors to chosen enterprises. If workplace safety and health conditions are found to be substandard, Labour Inspectors are expected to improve the situation using persuasion and, if necessary, their authority to compel enterprises through specific sanction powers. Bruhn (2009) describes this interaction as where the state meets enterprises and represents the process of turning national OSH legislation into practice. This discussion paper is centred on this interaction and follows on from calls by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EUOSHA) in its overarching review on improving compliance with occupational safety and health (OSH) regulations (EU-OSHA, 2021) to propose ways of providing additional empirical evidence to identify and promote the best strategies available to Labour Inspectors when they monitor and enforce OSH legislation within enterprises.

The conduct of visual inspections on construction sites is of crucial importance for workplace safety. This is because visual inspection is the primary method by which construction site hazards are routinely observed, monitored and controlled. However, there is no consensus guidance as to how such visual inspections should be conducted. This is resulting in many observable hazards going unseen and therefore not being appropriately managed on construction sites worldwide. In an attempt to improve the reliability of visual inspection, this study presents results from an innovative method called systematic visual inspection which utilises an iterative set eye scan pattern during observation. In this study using one construction site, systematic visual inspection is compared with custom and practice visual inspections conducted by four environmental health and safety professionals (EHSPs) and four senior site managers. The results were as follows; the lead investigator who used the systematic visual inspection method observed a mean 37.70 hazards per inspection (SD=40.92). In sharp contrast, the mean number of observable hazards identified by EHSPs per inspection was 11.94 (SD=13.51). For site managers, the results were 10.87 per inspection (SD=12.40). This improvement in hazards observed by the use of the systematic visual inspection method was highly significant (p=

Fire and rescues services the world over commonly conduct pre-incident planning familiarisation visits. During such visits, fire crews typically look for observable fire safety hazards. Accordingly, two research questions were investigated in this study being; how many fire hazards are typically observed during such familiarisation visits and can the reliability of visual inspection conduct be improved by using a novel systematic visual inspection method. A fire and rescue service with 22 fire fighters was recruited, and they conducted 21 pre-incident planning visits to occupied apartments blocks. The experimental design involved one of the fire crew being tasked with observing fire hazards using systematic visual inspection. The researcher collated the forms used by all fire crews to record fire hazards observed during their visual inspections. The mean number of fire hazards observed by fire crews using their normal custom and practice for visual inspection was 9.03 per visit (SD=4.39). In sharp contrast, the fire fighter who used systematic visual search, observed a mean 28.87 fire hazards per visit (SD=10.72). These results were highly significant and with a large effect size as measured by Cohen’s “d”. In conclusion, the evidence from this study supports the use of systematic visual search as a method of increasing the reliability of pre-incident planning visits conducted by fire a rescue services worldwide.

Railway maintenance presents many workplace hazards that need to be identified and controlled. Safety tours consisting of checklists are first choice methods for identifying workplace hazards in railway maintenance depots. But despite their ubiquity, the empirical ability of checklists to adequately observe hazards in workplaces has been questioned(1). Furthermore, recent research from DIT has demonstrated that the fundamental human sensory-perceptual and cognitive processes involved in visual search can profoundly affect the number of hazards observed by environmental health and safety (EHS) professionals(2). Simply put, some workplace inspection methods are better than others for observing hazards.

The purpose of health and safety procedures in the construction industry is to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of workers. Due to the relative high accident rates on construction sites internationally, strong health and safety legislation has been devised to minimize accident causation and promote construction worker’s safety. However, little attempt has been made to research the effects of those comprehensive health and safety interventions on the individual safety behaviour on construction sites. Therefore, the objective of this research was to investigate any changes to the health and safety on construction sites, specifically from the construction workers’ perspective. The research also included an assessment relating to the effects of the recession on construction workers’ health and safety practices in Ireland. The main findings demonstrated that company size predicted site safety behaviour on construction sites. Most noticeably, large organisations demonstrated higher levels of compliance to safety procedures, while medium sized organisations showed signs of regression and cited cost pressures as the main influencing factor. Small organisations reported a low level of compliance due to the cost required to ensure compliance to safety procedures and practices on construction sites.

This paper presents the preliminary progress of an industry driven programme to improve the data monitoring of safety/hazard near miss reporting from front line staff of a branch of a multinational energy supply company in Ireland. The paper discusses the main factors that emerged as possible causes for underreporting and the course of action selected for addressing them. The initiative, which is only in operation for 4 months has already led to an increase in reporting of “near misses” by a factor of nine. Furthermore, the level and detail of the reports is far greater than had previously being received.

The impacts of the national hazardous waste managemnent plan are discussed for various sectors in Ireland. These sectors include pharmaceutical, printing, transport, agriculture, health care, education and local authority sectors.

An ergonomic assessment of a customer services organisation was carried out. The nethodology is described and the results presented together with recommendations

Details on the circumstances costs and effects of 20 accidents from Ireland on injured parties and employers are presentred. The costs and effects are analysed and the results show the extensive range of costs and effects that accidents can have on employees and employers

A comprehensive listing of emerging physical risks, as compiled by academic experts, is presented together with supporting evidence and the Delphi methodology used.

An assessment of clinical waste management was undertaken in an Irish health care organisation. The methodology and results are presented together with recommendations.

It is now widely considered as good practice to include fire risk assessment techniques when developing a fire risk management system. However there is little guidance as to how to evaluate the influence of organisational culture and human behaviour on the resultant level of fire safety. Since most accidents are caused by the failure of management systems, quantified risk assessment must take into account local safety management practices, or else it will not provide reliable information”. This study tries to address this issue by developing a new fire risk assessment technique for assessing the fire safety management system of a multi-site, third level educational organisation . Information gathering The new technique used the traditional risk assessment technique of knowledge based surveying, to assess the building fabric in relation to relevant legislation and codes of practice. In addition various psychometric techniques were used to elicit data on the existing fire safety management system. These included: semi-structured interviews with management; and a questionnaire on fire safety attitudes, culture, behaviour and knowledge administered to 125 employees within the buildings concerned. The building survey as expected, highlighted deficiencies in the building fabric with regard to passive and active fire safety elements. For example, fire doors were in need of adjustment, and faulty maintained exit directional signs needed to be corrected. The psychometric survey elicited information on the way fire safety management was conducted within the buildings. Thus information on fire safety policy, staff involvement, training, occupant behaviour, and emergency procedures was obtained. Together the surveys enable a better analysis of the existing fire safety management approaches. Hence this combined technique offers the potential of a more beneficial outcome when carrying out fire risk assessments. The technique does entail more time and effort by the assessor. However this is considered justifiable in terms of the increased level of data produced on the efficacy of existing fire safety management systems.

A literature review on the health effects of landfill and incineration is presented together with an application to Ireland of the findings

The influences on safety standards and employee safety behaviour was analysed on 18 large construction sites on the island of Ireland. The safety management and documentation of these sites was also analysed. The results are discussed at length together with comprehensive recommendations for the industry.